Swinging the Distaff
by Cheated Of Between
Summary: Rule 63 abounds. Begins just before Avatar Aya is awoken by two Water Tribe siblings: Saikla and Kyut. They flee from the scarred Zaiko. AU in many ways, but holding canon plot. Warnings: Violence, war, underage sex (eventually), acknowledgement that the saviors of the world are children...me having fun, basically.


AN: So, basically, I'm rewriting ATLA. Why? Because it's fun. Almost every character has been rule 63'd, except for the ones who make far too much sense (to me) in their original genders to change. Some more backstory has been added, there's going to be underage sex eventually, some (hopefully) realistic touches, and a good bit of world-building, because (again) I think it's fun. Spirits are more present than in canon, and bending an element means that it bends you, too, a little.

I've got the next few chapters written, but after that, who knows?

A labret is a piercing under the lower lip, in the dip between it and the chin.

Ah, pronunciation guide!

Kyut=key-YOOT (don't overpronounce the first syllable, or the t)

Saikla=say-kla

tyaqeh=tea-yak-kuh (name for a thing I made up)

Qanna=kanna (k vs. q means something for the tribes, just wait)

* * *

"Kyut!" his sister called, biting off the syllables. "Damnit, get your skinny ass over here!" She glared at the blinding horizon, matching icy glare to icy glare: venom to indifference.

"Watch your mouth around big ears." A younger boy, the only other human figure on that landscape, hollered back, loping a little to catch up. Kyut was toting around yet another orphan for little reason other than he just couldn't say no to big blues eyes and wobbling lower lips. The little moron even went around in an amanti, a woman's parka with the large hood and room at the back for little children. Honestly, it was just another in a long list of reasons to mistake him for a girl.

"He can't even understand, so don't _start_ with that shit." The young warrior took a half-stride to meet him, dragging him forward with a handful of arctic goatskunk tail. "Get _over_ here."

Kyut brushed her hand off his front, scowling lightly and quickly determining that he would give her a block of ice to cuddle up with, or at least a dead chipmouse. "Saikla, you should've been born a man so I could knock you back a step or two. What's so important about me being over here?" He pulled up his hood more firmly against the wind, absently brushing back some hair as he did, tucking it out of the orphan's way. It was very long if you judged by boy standards, but not so very long if you called him a man of the tribe. Parted unevenly from forehead to back, he braided the bigger side back loosely in a fishtail weave from temple, arching back slightly to about the nape of his neck, where it joined in with a tangle of seven or eight simple, smoother plaits tied off with sinew a couple inches before his hair ended near his elbows. They usually splayed about when not kept tucked and knotted back in his hood. Beads and carved bones embellished the ties: green copper, blank blue soapstone, marked ivory, and one bear-wolf tooth.

Hidden behind his back, a little girl was gnawing on that tooth, slobbering.

"Look." The sister gestured with her spear, jabbing the eastern sky.

"Oh no," the tribesman whispered, dreams of petty vengeance slipping away. Near the horizon, the snow fell unmistakably grey. "We've gotta get back an' warn everyone!" He swung his arms to spin himself to face where they'd come, already taking two steps before he was 'nudged' in the ribs.

"Which is _also_ why we're at the top of a hill, dumbass. Make us a sled and we can blow right on through to the village." Her contribution done, she fingered her old boomerang and squinted into the east, watching snoot like it was an enemy in and of itself. The tribe girl's long face was uncommonly well-suited for watchfulness, with her sharp jaw, defined cheekbones, and strong, straight blade of a nose; it was her father's face, really, made at once more feminine and more serious by the grim set of a full-lipped mouth and arching eyebrows.

Kyut might not be a master waterbender, but he knows how to make things from ice. All it takes, most times, is the kind of basic technique that baby waterbenders do from their mother's backs, only controlled. That and a hell of a lot of patience. Take a little bit of snow, melt it, form a bit (a skid, a handle, something simple that'll only need one motion), help it freeze, and then build from that until there's nothing left to do but climb in and pray to Tui and La that it holds.

Working with absolute concentration, the tribesman chewed absently on the inside of his ivory labret. It had first been pierced through when he was five years old, like all boys' lips are, with a piece of sharpened bone about the size of a whisker. Over the years, larger and slightly larger bones are placed in, stretching the piercing to the traditional half-inch by the time boys' voices are dropping and squeaking in turns.

Most tribesmen his age would already be wearing a tyaqeh, a labret made of dark soapstone, but he hadn't earned the right to. Those were passed down through patrilineal lines to sons, nephews, and grandsons when they made their first big kill, usually tiger-seals. The men who'd gone to war had left these tiny treasures—some of them passed down through ten or more generations—in their women's jewelry cases, which is where Hakoda's would be right now if it weren't for Saikla.

She wore it through her lip as proudly as any young hunter, despite how the older women disapproved and girls her own age thoroughly and adamantly refused to speak with her. The chief's eldest didn't seem to care how others took her appearance, only that she liked it, felt comfortable with it. Saikla chopped most of her hair off at little more than chin length and wore a warrior's wolf-tail pulled back stringently and knotted with sinew. Two strands were allowed on either side of her face, unbraided and cut longer than the rest, halfway between chin and collarbone. The ends were pulled through and tucked back into long, thin ivory ornaments the length of the short joint of her thumb. Sometimes they clacked against the bone necklace than guarded her neck, made of over-lapping, slightly rounded pieces of tiger-seal bone. Kyut had carved both the beads and the necklace with prayers in the old symbols.

He'd been the one to silently hand her the tyaqeh when she first came home with a tiger-seal on her sled, a huge relief compared to the duck-hares she'd only been able to find before. Close to thirteen years old, she threatened to go do it herself if no one did it for her, no matter how _unseemly_ it was on a girl. Their GranGran, Qanna, had shaken her head ruefully and slipped the bone needle though her skin, having Kyut heal it in rounds so the scar would stretch in a matter of weeks instead of years.

In addition to that decidedly male ornamentation, the young hunter pierced her ears as women do, with many around the rims to the last 'outer' edge of her earlobes, each hole tied with whiskers from tigerseals. The pale, stiff hairs stood out a good two inches from her ears, almost likening them to that of a polar bear-wolf's or an owl fox's. The quantity of trophies showcased her providing abilities instead of her husband's as they ought to.

After much toil and a mishap or two, a rudimentary sled sat in from of the waterbender, gleaming in the bright spring light. During the time it had taken, his sister had set to pacing, chaffing for a fight. Saikla was a more-than-competent-hunter, but she wasn't a blooded warrior yet, and with no one to fall back on, it would be suicide. But just _thinking_ about Fire Scum made her want to put on war paint and lie in wait.

Kyut climbed in warily, his spear placed beside him, point forward. "Remember, push at the corners, or else it might—" _Fall all apart since I'm still not so sure of this, but we've got to hurry, or else_—

"Onward and downward, kiddo." Saikla pushed the sled a few strides, then jumped to stand on the ends of the skids. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon..!" With intense concentration and a few helpful pushes with foot and the butt of her spear, she urged the sled faster and faster until the kid in Kyut's hood shrieked with what might have been fear but just as easily could've been glee. The last snowfall had been particularly wet, now frozen for a truly terrifying ice-on-ice ride that propelled them to practically within shouting distance of the village, a walk that would have taken them half an hour.

Saikla pulled out her simple bone whistle, hopping off with the halt of the sled. The flute had only six notes, but that was more than enough. 'Raid,' she told them through the flute, loud and piercing on the icy landscape, though it sounded almost like the wind in the hands of gentler souls. 'Raid. Can you hear me?' The last phrase was an attention-getter, four notes down and two notes up quickly, skipping two.

'We hear you,' the soft cry of a flute answered from the village, 'raid.'

* * *

AN: So there we have it. I know it's a heck of a lot of description to shove in one chapter, but I like them. I want you guys to see them right off. Reviews, if you would be so kind.


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